I felt his ring around my finger
Before we’d even touched hands.
A meek merchant of charm,
He desisted from cheap sentiments

And instead borrowed a will of silence
From some eastern monastery or other,
Citing his affections through silent smiles
And a shrug of his shoulders which told me:

“I am as baffled by this world as you are, dear.
For far too long I have had to lean on one leg
Whilst standing, to ease my ache, to wait things out.
Come, sit with me.”

And so I did.

Resplendent white, some archaic sentiment
Of false-purity – it bathes me. Washes me of colour,
‘till I’m baked in the reflective glow of sunlight,
Rinsed of history, of time, treasures and identity.

I’m his now.

This full-bodied mirror, she stands so ungainly
In her bridal pose. A slapstick siren, a young deer
On stilts; A stretch of church floor to hesitate over
Upon hatching. She must make it to the sea.

In this reflection, I see neither him nor I,
But a composite of his kindness, my eyes;
Small forget-me-nots of a daisy-chained child
And a waysided academic.

It’s not my fault, nor his. Our dreams were wasted
By fairytales, poisoned by old fortune. No story
Succeeded, no narrative complete, ‘till love is resolved,
Until love is in place.

I felt his ring around my finger
Before we’d even touched hands.
For, why would I ever care to scale such mountains,
In a world he casts so temperate and sure?

So with each year that shall pass,
From now ‘till some curtained collapse,
I shall reduce in my margins,
Fragmented elements and forgotten scope;

I dissolve unto him,
Stagnant upon his solution.

What saddens me most,
in this world so abound,
is that my voice is so silent,
birdsong with no sound.

No sound to call out with
to still your cold shiver,
and so I ache with the love
that my words fail to deliver.

Yesterday's rainfall erodes the callouses
on my feet. It sends my soles
to tenderness, cleansing out
my footfalls from over the recent months.

I'm new again. The water removing
my strength much as the approaching winter
does to soften my will, my tendencies to
walk along these day-lit streets.

Christened to the elements, I'm expected
to pour strangers drinks with a
manufactured smile to cloak
the pains of my feet as they walk this world.

And you come to my mind,
as you often do. I hope you're not floundering,
I hope solemnly that you have found your place,
or else that your head falls peaceful

each night you lay down to dreams.

Because it's heavy weather in this world.
The air too dense for breath,
and daylight far too brief,
to sit and wait impatiently for life to begin.

And dear, all I can offer is my well-wishes,
I am afraid that it is all I have got,
for I can barely take care of myself,
filled with the fear and the shadow of loss.

Please, don't revoke me,
or assume my life to be a self-obsession,
or my friendship but a fleet of foot, or worse
a fragment of a chapter in your life.

I am still here, chipping away.
Still here in this coffee shop, still conjuring
a ghost of imagination, inspiration; words
that fail to scale what I hope

to impart.

And dear I'm scared that my life shall be curtailed.
Gone before I've had my fill of time,
oh, death before old age;
I'm not sure which one of them scares me more.

So I comfort myself with the thought of us all,
scurrying like wound-up clockwork toys,
aimlessly filling the world with delight,
hoping only that the hand that bore us

took the care to clear our way,
that she took the care to give us time.

The street lights kick in,
a pinkish hue,
some artificial moonlight,
in the fast darkening blue.

Only cars rush by,
cars and brave people,
back from work, their home a church,
their satellite dish, a steeple.

And here I find myself,
entombed in caffeine,
paint pages with words,
yet know not what they mean.

I sit in my sorrow,
and I sit in my haste,
to not disuse my emotion,
to not let this feeling go to waste.

And all that comes to my mind,
is to conjure a rhyme,
to garnish my words,
like liquor laced with lime.

Oh, innumerable streets,
with your innumerable lives,
each person a pattern
of what fate contrives.

There's just not enough time,
to scale these peaks,
truth far too elusive
to ever care to seek.

So I shall just stare into darkness,
in this coffee shop glow,
and chronicle this world
that sits at the window.

My desk is scattered with
notes, drafts, prototypes,
of my love letters to the world.

Ugly, thin spider-scrawls
of hieroglyphic ink,
pleading for my future self
to flesh the bone,

of the skeleton in my thoughts.

Beside them, the trusted red wine
to chase down the pressures
of the world, hold them in line.

Each sip, a godsend,
each bottle a promise
that love will never end.

The simple pleasure of a desk;
a confounding beauty,
the collage to your life
and all that preoccupies you.

Your personality is laid before you;
each picture, beer bottle, notebook,
a fragment of yourself.

My desk is scattered in
the loves, hates and frustrations
of my place within this world.

Ugly, thin spider-scrawls
of unintelligible ink,
pleading for some higher power
to flesh the bone,

of the skeleton that is myself.

The cloud settles over the moor.
Scottish peaks and thistle
darkened to shadow;
voids within voids.

A sheet, a film
of papyrus copper
plays reality.
It approaches the single paned window,
the abandoned outhouse.

It is deserted here;
one-and-a-half living souls
‘cross the entire landscape.

The story is in the air,
the tension toiling my innards,
scaling my arms to gooseflesh
and my mind to trepidation.

She’s here.

She is here and at the window.

Please, I hope, please
let it be a billowing of plastic
caught in the wind, movements
stifled by a telegraph pole
or some other cursed sign of company.

Occluding mass, she hesitates
by the window, I daren’t look,
but she is there all the same,
wailing achingly silent for reprieve.

I know why she is here.
I see it:

Thick rope. Crude, unrelenting knots,
I feel them press, cut with friction
into my wrists, twine like snakes,
devoiding me of life

one eternal day after another.
He prowls the door from time to time,
I fear it but it’s all that I have
save for the songs of the Tree Sparrows
that warm the winter.

He comes in to shed light to the room,
brings bread and milk, sometimes fruit.
More often than not he brings just himself,
presses me to the cold floor,

tries to make me feel something real,
demands my artificial praise.
He climaxes quickly, fills me with life, he says,
clutches my ***** hair, wracked with lice
and pregnant with the renewed hope

of his mercy.

None coming, I’m returned to my holster,
a stool upon an opened barrel,
I leave my messes behind,
the stench rising between my legs

and surrounding my senses,
until all of my life is nothing more
than excrement. Recycled, lived once
and then forevermore.

I live in my mind. Only the single-paned
window in this outhouse
offering an alternative;
most usually slate grey skies
and a barrage of hail upon the tin roof.

Outside of the window, I know
that life is something else. No books,
no words, no love, no music;
yet the weak Scottish light still
pierces the glass,

light always finds a way.

And then one day or one passage of time,
it matters not,
my hero, my villain, my father,
came to me no more.

I rejoiced. I rejoiced in my starvation,
the waste of my muscle,
the overflow of the toilet bowl,
skin reddened and bruised and eaten.

No one would come, if indeed there was anyone at all,
I knew that.

So I waited for death,
as death had waited for me.
We greeted each other as friends,
archaic pen-pals, acquainted at last,

I embraced his touch,
felt more life in death than life
had ever cared to bestow.

I kissed death on the lips,
told him of my long-sought desire for him.
He turned, a glint of silver,

and I found myself
on the other side of the single paned window.

Looking in, I saw only my regret.
The stool, the barrel, the waste
that had strewn the floor,
had surmised my life.

It was a sight unfit to un-see,
and so I stood in my perfect sanctuary,
never turned to look and face the light,
and instead stayed only to lament.

And so now I look into the old outhouse,
decades of decay improve its sight.
Old moss gathers over the fingernail marks
that I had carved so desperately
into the flooring.

Forevermore I stare upon my regrets,
forevermore I opaque myself
in half-existent smoke,
tapping on the window.

Upon this I look, a deep plunge of horror;
my heart freezes in frame,
upon a young woman’s face,
no more than fourteen years.

It is locked in a scream, a sense of despair,
eternal and rite, forever in shame.
A life lived in terror, naught but a tirade
of brutish **** and desperate privation.

We lock eyes for a moment,
enough proof thus,
that there is life beyond misery,
if one cares to look.

Winter passes with little consequence,
ourselves barricaded in these four walls;
heat folded in, embraced from daylight’s woes,
an entire generation is numb.

The universities are flooded, rinsed,
it’s a uniformal fashion parade;
homogenous clones, vacant discussions,
future fears, present greed, our apathy.

These are the faces of tomorrow’s world,
they are clothed in dime-a-dozen sweatshirts;
“choose your pigeon-hole, circle your answer,
tick appropriate box, sign and print name.”

The bars are overloaded, fluorescent
with lack of change, cheap *****, social decay;
stories are ornaments now, not lived in,
but tried on for size, disposable quest.

Memories born in pixels, never felt,
the out-of-focus lens of our daydreams
is no match for high-definition;
screens play out all eventualities.

The youth on borrowed time, defaulted loans
of goodwill. We drink only to stand our ground;
we will toast our tomorrows, welcome them
with cynical tongues and steeled spirits.

Teacher, you are right - it is just like me,
in wrath, I know only to curse the sea,

for all that is looking but never found,
for all the persons I shall never be.

So I turn back to my foolhardy pen
in the hope that I should breathe once again

the air we had shared in memories drowned,
now left to spoil amongst capricious men.

Our budding memoir is wrought in white gold,
yet at your ghost’s feet, I buckle and fold.

It is within these sheets that I am bound,
Oh, How it severs hearts to be so bold!

I shall live as a fragment of a hive,
lost autonomy; no longer alive.

But one day I’ll mine the old lion’s mound,
upon the tremor of my childhood’s sound,
I’ll yell from the cornfields; wait to be found,
‘neath the canopies where the leaves have browned.

And teacher, you’re right - it is just like me,
to dismiss my blessings, I’m blind, you see,
to all that’s thawed in this frozen beauty
and the way that we kiss so absently.

I remember the old reservoir.

The one we used to take to
walking around in the hedonic
aeon that was our youth.

I’m still young.

I’m young but the years have
aged the path that took us back to there,
grown over in thistle, thicket and thorn.

It’s cracked, with infant pools
of rainwater filling the potholes;
man-made, still habitats.

A mimicry of their mother,
water-filled basin of breadth
and no brine.

Only on those blue-moon occasions,
with cynical tongues and carved faces
do we still cross those few paths
that remain.

I’ve learnt now to accept my loss.

Dear Draycote, pool of life,
circular route and void of time,
I can dream of your return

into my days, but awake
to the sight of my long-gone friends
and all they once were.

I cannot hope to cross your path
in the way that we once did.
For we used to walk in circles,
and now that circle is complete.

So we shall live our separate lives,
pin badges, names, onto our *******,
thin ribbons to bind our fates.

But what, my life, do I call my friends
that now only frequent my mind?
Oh how do I catch up with them,
after falling so far behind?

A speck on a tile,
the cabinet floor,
my patchwork wooden table
left to disrepute.

That red speck of being,
crack open another,
the sharp side of glass or else
the fluid within.

It laces my blood,
or else is blood itself,
staining my innards
and shaping my mask.

My martyred heart
and its tireless pound,
marching the red-coated soldiers
to their eventual demise.

Incorrigible workhorse,
sustain my progress
when all else has turned to ash and rain,
when all else has been slain.

My Boxer, he pleads
to keep on up the hill,
to allow him his efforts and fluid,
when we’ve all but given up.

And so I shave in the light
of the late-morning glow.
My hair collects in your old shaving mug,
remnants of yesterday.

So for now I’ll ignore
the speck on the tile,
and all of its false promises
in the time of my storm.

For now I’ll awake
with taut skin and white scars,
with broken-sleep eyes, pastured bone
and some far-off notion

of forlorn hope.

The weight of the world smothers me,
leaving troubles in my head,
yet you soften me with tranquility;
your own weight upon my bed.

And what a waste of poetry,
to forget what you bestow.
So I’ll write to you dear, so breathlessly,
to tell you of what I owe.

Without you I live absently,
just a shape within this world.
For, you’re the blossom of the cherry tree,
the colour of life unfurled.

So think not on the atrophy
of my day-to-day romance,
and more so upon the fluidity
of which you and I do dance.

We dance to divine simile,
and I write of what was left.
You may say that I write with such beauty;
but without you I’m bereft.

Bereft of any symmetry,
devoid of your wholesome kiss,
for, it’s with kindness that you nourish me,
and leave me in fateful bliss.

This is not a poem,
it’s a loss of hope.

Art only the escape
from what was,
what is
and what will always be
until all that’s left is

what?

I scatter my childhood,
leave it among the plains,
forget the trail of grazed knees,
praying hands and broken hearts

until all that’s left is

what?

I feel the teeth in my carcass;
always ‘I’;
never the pains of others,
never the loss of tide,
still I wonder why I don’t understand.

This is not a poem,
it’s a loss of answer.

School only the escape
from what is,
what isn’t
and what will never be
until all that’s left is

what?

I listen to you,
and it breaks my heart.
It breaks my heart in places
my words cannot scale.

Just your heartbreak;
over and over, rinse-and-repeat
sorrow in my ears
as I walk through my days.

This is not a poem,
it’s a loss of form.

Temporary I know,
but the world often disarms me,
when I am in most need of
my bow.

Oh, Danielle
your voice carries south
and whistles
through the ages.

Oh, Decibel
your sound hollows out
and compounds
through the stages.

Oh, Wishing Well
full of stagnant doubt
and rusted,
wasted wages.

Oh, Danielle
your voice naught without
keeping me
in cages.

The blind beggar plays
to the tune of the river,
a Parisian lullaby;
une ode à la Seine
to deliver.

Oh, quickened street,
oh, passing joy;
my concrete slab,
my Helen of Troy.

Please stay with me now,
my dear wine-soaked friend,
do not linger on beginnings;
nor focus upon
the end.

We’ll sing over coffee
just to welcome November,
a Parisian ensemble;
une chanson pour la saison,
dying ember.

Oh, rainy skies,
oh, painted prize;
my lucid dream,
set before my eyes.

Please stay with me now,
my idealised sight,
do not lend to compromise;
in these foreign streets
of no plight.

And the blind beggar still plays
that tune of the river,
a Parisian lullaby;
une ode à la Seine,
et chaleur pour l’hiver.

The old vacuous building
parasols the weak sun;
nothing enters here.

Nothing but rainwater
sleeping in puddles.
Cigarette ends, wet cardboard,
with only whitewashed walls
showing light,
showing grime.

Grey in the cracks, the mortar,
tainting, turning to off-white,
the pollution of the city
staining the bridal gown.

How far is the bridge,
from my mug of tea?

How far are people talking
above The Grateful Dead?

The old vacuous building
barricades the strong wind;
and I can’t leave here.

I haven’t seen sunlight
in over a month.
Nicotine gum, apathetic tug
in my matter
showing then,
showing now.

Scribbled in notes, I sought her.
Failing, I turn to lost sight,
the pollution of the city
turning the pages down.

How long will it take,
upon bended knee?

How hard is it to balance,
these troubles in my head?

The old vacuous building
parasols the weak sun;
I’m scared I’ll never leave.

You paint me in platitudes
each day we awake,
though you're not the dear reader
I crave.

You make love in the spaces
I claim for myself.
I submit to your ***;
I behave.

It's not that I can't love
what will come to be,
it's just I live for my childhood
so brave.

How I wish I could live in
a promise of joy,
but my mind only lives
in the grave.

And I wish I could live in
a life humble and slow,
where all that I love
is bestowed.

I spend far too much time,
writing about wine.
I spend far too much time,
needing it.

And I spend far too much time,
making words that rhyme.
And not enough time,
living it.

For the banks of the Tyne,
I sing for what's mine,
And all of the brine
it searches.

For the bells that do chime,
and green nails of lime,
You are all that I dare
dream about.

Though I spend too much time,
cleansing the grime,
And far too much time
cursing it.

And there's not enough time,
to live like a mime,
to only chronicle secrets
in silence.

I plan on using your shaving mug.

a plan not worth telling
unless you knew of
the many howling adolescent evenings
I spent
jabbing my fingers in the snout
to touch your leftover hair.

It was stuck,
preserved with ancient soap,
cleansed of life, of pigment.
I wanted to touch the filament
that once burnt you
into being.

Yourself entombed
in pottered clay, soft beige
monument. The hands that once
shaped it, like yours;
they tend to me, bring me shape
in a formless world.

The same shoots grow here;
on my crown and over the temples.
I worship your concept,
myself a replication - thin haired
and inadequate. Less loved, more turbulent,
with naught left but life.

It's less than what you have;
idealised memory, a shrine of compliments,
a spotless life of saviour and sin.
How I love you, oh privation,
How I miss you,
dear Father.

now is the time though,
to clear my reflection.
now is the time
to wash you out.

I hear laughter
filtered as if through a can,
it finds its way through the crack
at the foot of my door.

It sounds false, somehow.
Sharp and jarring, with each bark
an insult, as if their lightness
is mocking me.

Unintelligible sound;
the release of emotion
undefined through language.
I can’t write it, it just is.

A call to arms;
their laughter a catharsis,
a defiance in the knowledge
of their eventual death.

I can’t match it.
The incapable voice in the choir,
my heart soars, aches at their boundless sound,
but only my ears may sing.

it’s windy i think,
at least the windows are rattling.

the men in hard hats,
yellow motes off in the distance
and their jackets the colour
of poison,

they scale the façade
of the contralateral building.

they’re speaking, yelling,
probably catcalling, singing
their ugly songs on cherry pickers
like some crowned nest
of wagtails.

it’s early i think,
though the lights are always on.

they’re fluorescent, staining,
unflattering colouration, rinse
your skin to poverty,
to jaundice.

i’m here because of pills
i’m here because school is out,
i’m here because i’m tired
and i’m here because of you.

flowers sit at the side,
already dry upon purchase.

gifted awkwardly;
do we give flowers to a man?
a boy in sheets, foolish drunkard,
balloons with helium
to lift my spirits.

its lonely i think,
though it’s filled with people.

wristcutter, lupus, chemo
all thrown into one.
we’re what’s left post-production,
left to sit in an outlet store;

buy me for half-price
or else half an hour of company.

i’m the young one,
nurses scan me with motherly eyes,
the radiator warmth,
their rounded bosoms,
‘you remind me of someone’.

at twelve to three, she washes me,
asks me to lift my *****
so she can get at the two-day grime
of indolence.

it’s sad here i think,
at least the television is boring.

daytime ghosts and broken families
make my bedsheets gain weight;
even the balloon sags
in heavy misery,
nothing is mine.

sleep comes in fits
and starts in blankness.

it ends with my questioning
of where the dream began
and where hope had perished.

you haven’t come,
i knew that you wouldn't.

it’s hard to blame you,
what with my post-use pinings
long after you’d given up
and the way i act familiar
after treating you like a stranger.

i long to leave here,
so much the windows are rattling.

i’m here because i am
i’m here because of my job,
i’m here because i’m tired
i’m tired because of you.

You claim yourself to be
A lack of symmetry,
From what you are
And what you dream
And what you’ll never be.

The teeth marks on your bed
And worries in your head,
Knotted stomach
And praying heart,
We share a common thread.

For, we’re all ****** lives
And only love survives.
We know not more,
No knowledge stored
Past communal archives.

So, don’t claim yourself to be
A life lived absently,
For you’re still young,
If you’re alive,
There’s time to swim the sea.

My dreams are leaden
With the weight of my past.
They pin me passionless
To my bed,
Some heavy handed vice
Clamped to my wrist.
Oh, crucifix,

You keep me martyred in my sheets,
The slate grey sky at my window
And northern wind that rattles the walls.
It’s enough to keep me in.

Your name passes by,
With features ill-defined.
A solution of Thyme,
Left to waste.
With heat of flame I’m
Left to dissolve.
Oh, perennial,

I suffered long, oh city streets,
Bite of cold from my belt buckle.
I dress swiftly to brave city sprawls.
It’s enough to keep me in,

It’s enough to keep me in,
When winter is at the door.

Narcissus was hunted,
His life abated through reflection
‘Till all that was left was his beauty
Stained on the water’s surface,
And his tale as a flare in the night
For every proud soul.

Thenceforth we shamed ourselves,
For every fleeting glimpse at the face
Which contains the twinned thoughts of our own.
The mirror, now a symbol
Of despicable self-assurance,
Man’s vain invention.

It is the microphone
However; the tool that listens,
Clamours attention to every word
And breaks in vicious soundwaves,
That’s the true measure of vanity,
A catapulted voice.

The mirror, used more so
As a reflection of our self-doubt
And all of the fear people can see.
My self-effacing curses,
My knowledge of singularity,
And total lack of greed.

A life of endless possibility,
More books to read
Than ever my eyes could
Consume.

Each pause of breath
An absence of life,
Each forgotten kiss
A sorrow.

And what do I owe to the meagre crowds,
Who so demand my time?
My life once spent
Is worth no more
Than a petty, failed crime.

This world contains indomitable scope,
More ground to walk
Than ever my feet could
Assume.

Each silent word
Is a wasted thought,
Each forgone embrace
But a lie.

Still, I walk in ever-decreasing loops,
Some solipsistic spiral.
My youth soon spent,
‘Till all that’s left
Is my poisoned past, now viral.

I look into my life.
It’s distorted,
Curved at the peripheries
‘Till I’m required to squint,
Just to make out the features
Beneath the glass.

In the snow lies dead thought.
Water stagnant,
Green-blue and faded paintwork.
How I ache for that great hand
To lift, shake and cascade me
With memories.

Rain on me my life’s memoirs.
Drown me in snow.
I sit and I wait for when
These monotone streets will
Fan and flame, burst to colour,
Burst to flavour.

My romanticised past,
I marvel at.
Recall each day as a dream,
And each night an excursion
Of wanderlust, innocence
And fair fortune.

For now, I’ll remain here.
These arching walls,
My old translucent prison.
Life in stasis, I’m stubborn
As I avoid career-paths
In my dome,

And wonder when this world
Will begin to feel like home.

The wicked, they come
In a cerulean dream.
The cellar door opened,
With an opposable thumb.

A disposable past
And no ties in the future,
They live within ******
And die through their caste.

Oh, Ford! They cry out
For all of their blessings.
Oh, Ford! I cry too,
To drown silent doubt.

“Take me to your room.”
She breathes, voice coppered,
She conducts me. Unzips in
One movement, fit to bloom.

“Lenina,” I call,
Eyes blinded by her colour.
In a world so built and grey,
I live only in her sprawl.

We finish, my heart descending.
She nicks her lips to my ear,
Then reminds me thus;
“Ending is better than mending.”

To bed we fall; once, twice, thrice.
Each time I cling longer,
Wrap her in bedsheets,
‘Till she feels our ****** splice.

With no use, she’s gone
To some other embrace.
Some cold shouldered support,
Then to the salon.

She’ll tell all to her friends,
A gaggle of giggles.
And he’ll speak of her,
Like some means to an end.

“Pneumatic,” is she,
He’ll say with no stutter,
“You should have her,” he’ll offer,
Like the fruit from a tree.

No, like meat, like meat,
She is passed around.
Like animals, the Alphas
Bruise, **** and maltreat.

Community. Snake-like,
It moves as if one.
Each person a muscle,
Not separate but a part.

Identity. It blurs,
‘Till I forget the use
Of my name. Push it out,
Repeat in my dreams.

Stability. It comes,
A two-gramme holiday.
A superficial guffaw
That veneers my face.

Oh, Soma! Come take me,
From where I don’t belong.
To where passions are birthed
Far from the hatchery.

To where feelings are heartfelt,
Not found in a pill.
Where waistlines aren’t throttled
By a Malthusian belt.

A savage I am,
In my pursuit for more.
When I long for freedom,
And not another half-gramme.

Gaia, she held us in her womb.
From fish to ape, she mothered too.
Now all that’s left is this soulless gloom
Where man is born only to consume.

How heavy this is,
My waking young soul.
So childish and meek,
So hapless and whole.

How stubborn this is,
The browning dry leaf.
Reminds me I’m but
A lifetime so brief.

A spindle or spoke,
In the world’s great wheel.
Features but a blur,
Of all that I feel.

But what use is this,
To lament my stay?
To curse tomorrow,
And not live today.

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how each chime rolls
Or taps the surface of the air,
Each an exultation of depression,
Creation.

Eyes sting with salt, wetted with
What has been – the foolish enterprise
Of my words. These notes, they
Scale the patterns of my life.
Pure emotion.

Inexpressible.

Hammers on heartstrings,
They fill the emptied rooms with
Sound.

Lo, how each key sings.
Their voice naught in solitude,
Yet a celebration of life’s discourse in
Union.

Ears ring like a music box. Chopin’s
Soul in the spaces beyond time,
Touching mine. Our sorrows pastured
Green, laying life under the ground,
Tough fingerprints.

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how they still my jittered soul.

Lo, how I accept the drizzle,
The arrival of autumn
At my window.

Scars

Oh! Undulating mood.
Harrowed thoughts and a sparse
Nest of recollections for
Fair fortunes on which I brood.

Skin, torn and contorted.
Fingertips a sign of
A future bleak and a past
Doctored and left distorted.

Oh! Talentless wretch! I
Suffer for my art and
My art, it suffers for me.
I, some malproportioned sketch.

Skin, lined with old fault lines.
A freeze-thaw depression,
The past of sewing scissors,
My ****** Nazca Lines.

Oh! My littered landscapes!
Thin plastics kicked up in
The wind. ***** my longings,
The map to plot my escapes.

Be still, wailing child.
Your eyes patted down,
Spirit tender and mild.
Pressed to a surgical gown.

Iris bleached with light,
Be still in my sight.
****** mouth on my breast,
Unquellable appetite.

Be still, untouched page,
Do not strain to cry.
Cast to light on this stage,
Born and now stirring to die.

I stood pretty as a picture
In the full-length mirror.
Eyelines painted black
And traced like a cat
‘Round the pools and pigments
Of my icy blues.

My hair smoulders with gloss of youth.
A fire left untamed
With scorched red wine lips
Oh! Such rare delight,
To embrace my image
And not decorate

It with scorn.

I imagine pupils pouring
Over me. Men turned
Boys upon my wake.
Skirt hitched demurely,
Landing with subtlety
Above my opaqued knees.

I comb the heaving, damp dancefloor.
Search out for Beta-***.
The kind to pin me
With softened kisses.
To love for the night and
Then like fireworks

Perish by day.

The music though, it takes me with
Skill. Oh! It knows the sweat
That clings upon me.
The rhythm takes me
Beyond the tooth and nail,
The attempt and fail

Of every boy to come before.
Sweet ***! How it lifts me
And the mere presence
Of youth is enough.
I go home alone in
Absent knowledge of

The plight of women.

You stop me in the streets. You say
“Where have you been tonight,
Where are you going.”
But - not a question.
For, you dictate answers,
Scurry my body

With your eyes, soon hands.

You tower me, masculine height.
Oh! Such dizzying peaks
For my giddy mind.
I say “I must leave”
You say “Where” once more. I
Wonder, do questions

Ever line your lips? Catcalls and
Footfalls now so long gone.
We are alone and
We both know the case.
Your vast darkened hands clutch
At my belt buckle,

Draw me in.

Reeled, I kick up in death throes,
Mouth open but soundless,
Lungs devoid of air.
Laid out on the block,
I’m your catch of the day,
Your squalor by night.

Regardless how much give out,
How little I fight, we’re
Both in the knowledge
I am your’s tonight.
Your lips, they steal my neck.
Paralyse me, not

With softness
But with fright.

I stand pretty as a picture,
No look in the mirror.
A reflection of
Shame and submission.
Pools and pigments devoid
Of life. Emptied lungs

And icy blues.

The carpet is thick here.
Fuggy and like pastelled peaches.
In the fibres is us; flesh flakes dead and brittle,
Our nail, hair and bone,
Liquor in hand to toast our time’s acquittal.
It is a night in the present, our past’s indulgence
Upon all that we held too dear.

The chime of bottled beer.
I surrender to your faces.
A sea of young fortune; it favours acute flesh,
Our ***, bare and tone,
Her nails painted black, bruised legs folded in mesh.
For once, I cling not to my ungodly obsession
And think not of time’s grisly sneer.

You live within my tears.
Each moment aside from this room.
In grey matter is us; memories flayed and malformed,
Our kiss, touch and moan
Bought several times since, efficiently performed.
Don’t lie to me, the meaning of your transitioned lives,
Nor that my face does not still endear.

The air is too thick here,
Now that I have left this shelter.
I shall meet you in waves; upon battered beaches,
Our age, wage and loan
To lace our tongues in most defeated speeches.
In this life it is us; now so rehearsed in our kindness,
But still shrapnel and fallout
In all that we fear.

These streets are postcards.
Moments of my youth,
My loves.

Each park bench enveloped within,
Licked and pressed to
My forehead.

Return me to those times.
I want my streets back. My memories
Present and my friends
Still readied for me.
Pour moi.

Pour me another drink
Whilst I forget the ones I had.
Red wine has long since replaced
My blood,

My skin; gone stale.
The streets press in on
My chest.

I can’t breath for the dizzy memoirs,
Yowling at the moon in
My brain.

The simple sway of a tyre swing,
You and I,
The chains.

The simple fog of your ice machine,
You and I,
The cider.

The simplicity of you and me,
You and me,
The years.

These streets are ghost ships now.
Bounty once abound, now gutted.
Do not tease me with your platitudes
Oh town,

And just let me be on my way.

I waste myself for you, oh page.
I battle sleep and demons and
Face what I would otherwise
Curtail, for the simple act of
Filling you up.

I trap everything that I am
Within you, page. A web for my
Foggy thoughts, dew caught like
Tears, crystallising the opaque
Within my life.

You are the recipient in my mind,
Oh page. Brain chatter forced into
Structure, a soldier. Almost a child.
You **** me like an alpha, my borrowed
Pleas at your feet.

And so I tread you like infant snow.
Each print a scar, each word a brittle
**** stem. Your silence a truth beyond
My own and whatever I say
Will pollute it.

So I walk round in circles. Tiptoes
Like sparrows, piecrust shapes in
The snow. I walk in circles to not
Carve a path. To hide my meaning.

Don’t follow me home.

The sunflower is drunk. Fork stuck
In the soil, like roots. It holds the
Skinny ******* in place. How tall
Would you be, if your spine did not

Droop over itself? Did your mother not
Tell you to hold your shoulders up straight?

Still you have scared me since infancy.
Your lanky demeanour, God’s scarecrow.
Upright in the field or against my Grandfather’s
Brick wall. Creeping up in the days.

You grow.

Oh, Cyclops! Your eye it scours
Me. Fixes me with a Martian stare,
Orwellian and deprived, though
Decorated with a halo. Your flower

A startling diagram of creation.
The big bang, black pupil, dark heat
And brown to flames, fans and galaxies.
My heartbeat is a speck somewhere,

I know it.

Sunflower, the awkward arbiter. The
Unknowable in your eye, always watching
But never watched. Your centre burnt like
Charcoal, inescapable void. Don’t take me.

Please, don’t swallow me.

My thoughts stretch like
Centuries. They pull apart
And snap and make my body
Little more than a vessel

Of something or other. I feel
Flesh as if it was the bottom
Of a mossy pool. Or something
Else I know not of.

They stretch like mothers.
Bending, breaking in pieces
For the hand of what will be,
Forgetting what is and

What was.

I strain like a tendon. A fragment
Of an atom. A multitude trying to
Understand itself, over and over.
It’s over.

There is a war on the screen
Full of filth that goes unseen.
Yet all I can do is sip peppermint tea
And regurgitate conceited poetry.

Of days too long where I long to hold
Purpose in me, a spirit bold.
To go forth and spread a message of love
And pray to the science of the stars above.

But it’s a caterwaul of profiteering
And adverts for the hard of hearing.
It’s to my heart, this world’s poison is seeding,
My once hopeful head is now receding.

So it is with compromise that I do age,
A prostituted soul on minimum wage.
I’ll escape out into my fictitious streets,
Where fairytale lovers still care to meet.

Where words are read and held to *******,
To imprint the words upon the tremor of chests.
Where misfortune is fickle and lasts not long,
To where the dandelions may sing their song.

I feel his eyes on me
Whenever I cross the room.
It is mostly when there are others
Present and we must share ourselves,
Expended over people

And places. The spaces
Before we fall into our wine stained
Non-marital bed. The grape blood reminds me
Of my own. On my own, fledgling ******* and acne,
Elaborately false *******

Where I would never have my fill.

A child-man I forgot.
Or remember only as a token,
Cardboard textured orange peel
In a breast pocket never worn. I forget
Most everyone

Now that he is
In my life. He obliterates
All else like light pollution.
Not of fluorescent neon or slogans
But an exploding star

That dims all else
In my peripheries. I am
Diminished also in his love,
Both wholesomely and then in a sense
Where I lose my ‘I’.

It is in his shadow
Where I live. Small comet
Hidden in the black of velvet,
Licked by the spit of his flames
That scald me

And bathe me
In equal measure.

I am more than this
I know. Or guess. His tailor hands
Though, are efficient and caring. They
Do not create me, but he threads himself
Into my sides

And drops a stitch
Only to adulate the rhythm
When he enters me. When he enters me
I become burgeoned and full and blood fills
The rusted roadways

That shine blue
Through my pasty prism.
He finishes. A gloom fills me. Not
A gloom, more of a nothing and he is
An obliterated star once more

And I his aftermath.
He has killed me with a kindness,
A ghost only when witnessed, kissed.
I have long since forgotten whether I have
Been taken prisoner

Or gave myself up.

And so here we are again,
You scrap of nothing.

Half of my hair, half my eyes
And all that I ****. You take me

To the side and calm me down
With my own thoughts.

I say “that’s what he would
Have wanted”, the he is you

Of course, whatever you are.
I think that you’re a Bible,

The one on my bookshelf.
There is still a folded page from

When I was seventeen. Seven pages
In, more than the years my mother

Has lasted in matrimony and more
Than enough to disbelieve what

You believed. I am far too sobre
And too far gone tonight and so

It is typical for you to come to mind.
“You *******” I think to you, or

Somebody else. It doesn’t matter.
What a perfect excuse you gave me

For the chip I bear
And the cross on my shoulder.

Or whatever.

I will wait here.

I will wait precisely in this cabinet,
Until you prise it open
In that delicate curiosity
That is lost in ‘today’.

My words are more patient than myself.
I know that now,
I think I always did.
It is why I love and

Why I love so patiently.

I will wait so gladly in my place,
Until poetry is fashion once more.
It is a sure case
In a sorry state.

Hearts that beat too fast
And breaths that are too frequently
Forsaken for a foolish enterprise
Of some invested individual

Sat watching behind a blast screen.

I will wait here and think back.
To remember the fuzzy nothing
Of my childhood mind. I recall little
But the polarities. The spaces of life

That intercede mere existence.
I bask in these doctored images of a past
That I never quite had. A fatherless summer
Forgotten instantly in garage top vigils,

Kicked footballs and years that were endless.

I wonder if my words will last longer
Than the etchings of your gravestone.
I wonder more so whether you would
Approve of them and how much I would

Have cared if you did not. A father is lost
And is abstract for me. Like God,
An ever-present utterance of nothing at all
Or perhaps everything that I am

Or could possibly ever be.

I wonder whether my love of words
Is nothing but a longing for permanence
In a world that has forever shown me
Futility. I have read of it in your name

Again and again through till now,
And thenceforth years to come. Your name,
How it needs to mean something,
Your voice, your ‘I’ through the ages,

For it envelops me within it - we are the same Mr.

It is within your void that I search for a father.
An ancestor to tell me who I am
And from where I have come. The plight of the
Ape-men that have been, their legacies

Wrought in blood-stained gold
But also in each yellowing poem
And from the hand prints on cave walls.
These are the will of my fathers,

The trinkets on my mantelpiece.

It is within you all that my words
Remain patient. It is within you all
That my will remains clear. For I know now
(Or perhaps I always did)
That there is a voice amongst us.

It may sleep through the noise of today,
All-talk and no communication. It may sleep
Right on through until we awake. Our eyes
Will burn for staring at the screens,

But our hearts will sing for their reprieve.

There are two sides to all. Two sides
To the world, and where it may sit
On the wheel. Black or red?

A split of inheritance. Right sided
Dreams, left sided mornings. Mournings
For those fragments of imagination

Left gagged and bounded. Tamed by
Penny-pinching and waist-trimming
And all other concepts that work like

A chisel. Chip away at me, they happen
Like thorns and barbs until I don’t look
In mirrors. And I dare not breathe past sighs.

A split of inheritance. The joy of invention,
A brain for science. New discoveries smash
Like champagne bottles to bless understanding.

It splits. It splits in two. The descendants build
On the used brownfields. Grey matter on grey matter
As if building over condemned land.

The roses of love and star-travel are but one side.
A veneer, more accurately. For in their gift
We would pick apart their heads, our heads,

Forgetting the years of thicket and thorn that
Had grown underneath. In forgetting, they talk
Of surprise at our true nature, though the thorns came

Long before the flowers, and were ever-present throughout.

Each measure of wonder; of love and poem and comedy
Are cruelly tempered. They are tamed by lust.
Lust for power, for vengeance. In-group. Out-group.

Heads or tails? I lie instead on my side.
A fallow state, a false parade. Technicolor masts
To sail lazily on my false knowledge. I speak of compassion

And philosophy. I hope they validate me
In the same way certificates do, for those men in suits.
Their success apparent and substantial, its frame

Weighs heavy on me. Barbs and dead weight,
My breath perishes uselessly I feel. A dandelion head
Caught in a chain link fence or a jungle of concrete,
Full of promise, pregnant with fertility
In a sea of barren saltwater and cigarette ash.
There’s nothing left but to write. There are

Two sides, two sides to all. Two sides to my words,
The hope of a finished poem. The harrowing read-through
By the morning. A mourning for myself

And my inactivity. The breadth of life in other’s words,
Tales of movements, experience; novelties in my
Small-town mind. I dream of Peru.

Two sides to myself. Two sides as there is to all.
One side is a virtuoso. Tuxedo-clad and hair slicked back,
Detaching from its greased trap only through

My movements with the keys. A movement free
Of thought. A meditation of music, a collective
Unconscious of chords. It is a side.

The same side that tells of tales past. Man lived
Before money. If man dies, money is contracted to go too.
It is bound. It is rite. It is truth.

The other side, though. The other side
Begs and borrows. It casts anger at my dreams
And how they lighten my wallet so. It hacks

Away with my lungs. Cigarette tar laced in bronchioles,
The result of a dream unrealised. I fidget in this other side.
It makes me shift in my seat, forever impounding,

Forever confounding. Forever uncomfortable.

There are two sides, two sides to all.
One is the scope of man, the ideal self.
The other is the result. A bulb-lit scoreboard

Above our heads. Money signs and bloodlines
Are a measure of man. Our measure. Two teams;
One competing for gold, the other asking

Of what competition is at all. And so one side
Sees us as animals, our rules foolish and lame
Aside those of Nature (with a capital ‘N’)

And the other tells us it is all there is. At least
All that there is worth knowing. For what good
Is it, to dream of the stars? Or Peru, even?

If you do not have the successes to get there?

Two sides, there is forever two sides.
One is a love for myself and for all.
The other is brain-chatter. It tells me little

But it says a lot.

They run up a flag on the roadside.
It is dusted and covered in tar,
But the message still comes across
And it reads without words.

The women and children went first.
The men were quick and fierce,
And the kind hearted were always the first to die.

Plumes of ash and smoke were pillars in the skyline
And it was truth once the birds stopped flying,
That every living thing had died that day.
The rest was existence.

It was an obvious ending.
Played out by the thousands in their minds,
But only a few through their tongues
And so it was said without words.

The lunatics and charlatans came first.
Most didn’t follow them
And they were right not to.

They tied in the imminent and the absurd
Until it was impossible to separate the two.
They spoke of truths understood entirely
But ridiculed all the same.

By the time sanity caught up it was too late.
The trees had lost their branches in a cancer,
Now just charred cigarette stumps
And they died without words.

The trees and the vegetation came first.
But now they grew only in pockets
And even then still scorched by the sun.

And so now the mother was barren.
Her coastlines bruised and skyline broken,
Twisted metal and scorched Earth,
No longer a parent but a victim.

Only the dead and the shadows are living now.
They are dusted and covered in tar,
Their stomachs have long since ceased yowling,
And they starve without words.

The humans were gone first.
Until all that was left was everything grey
And the minions of Orcus.

They are wrought like humans,
But their eyes are feral and their teeth sharpened.
The taste of blood is in their own,
Animal, Angel or Human regardless.

A fire burns and men sit in circles.
What is left of them at least.
They scrape the flesh off the bone
And they live without words.

The bullets were used first.
Cheap and *****, but it got the job done.
Straight through the eye socket.

No moment for practice,
They honed their knife skills on passers-by
Or on the weak and dying amongst them.
The old men bled like raisins.

Old trucks were gutted motels.
Seats with the padding ripped out
And a nest of hornets in the back
And they slept without words.

The sound of rain on metal came first.
And it took the dead into dreams
Of what they once were, if ever there was.

Sounds of traffic outside windows
And the smell of coffee in the streets.
The familiar jingle on the radio
Reminds them of when money bought food.

They dream of whiskey and women.
They sleep in tight groups, breath muted and docile
And think of primal pleasures.
And they dream without words.

Their memories died first.
Until they could not see faces anymore,
Save for the pictures in their wallets.

It was only in the brief interludes,
A moment alone; ******* on a tree
Or clutching their *****
That they felt entirely human again.

Other than that, they were less than air.
It suited them. Everything grey.
Everything grey or transparent,
And they killed without words.

It was language that died first.
A world of communication but no understanding,
Noise but no substance.

Until now there is nothing left but ‘it’
And whatever there is to get there.
For a knife through skin and empty lungs
Is only ****** if you call it so.

And so they run up a flag on the roadside.
It is a beacon for all that are left.
A sign for the gullible pilgrims
And they roast without words.

It was the end that came first.
In the moment that man descended the trees,
And used it for firewood.

Still in our childhood, we had our chance
But we traded it for what felt good.
Would I have it any other way?
It would make no difference now, what I want.

The shadows will limp to their deaths,
Stubbornly chained to the Earth.
And hell comes not in the struggle
But in the potential of man not realised.

The most unfair thing I was ever taught
In my sorry little life,
Is that death is the only thing you can rely upon.

I was most upset to find that I was not transcendent
To all those fools
That succumed to the hands of death before me.

Why, I could kick and scream,
I could crawl and plead
But I still must make my merry little way

Back into the Earth I was born from.

And so life - what of it?
I know that I shall grow up and become an adult
And therefore more childish with each day.

And so why should I don those suits
That stifle my throat
And choke my idea of ‘I’?

Noon is the most sublime time
To emerge from dreams
and to be greeted by the sun

And not blaring alarms,
or bleeting chidren.
Thus, I yearn to write.

Not out of skill
And certainly not out of profit,
But to take back all of those moments

with my back upon the soil.
For when I am feeble and when I am spent,
I know by now that I shall regret

Not the moments with empty pockets
But the world that I lost
In a restless rush,
In a useless toil.

Words, words, words.
They have begun to dominate my life.

They are married to my thoughts
In such a way that one is to work,
Or more luckily, his wife.

Sometimes I can not bear them,
Whether spoken or especially read.

For when I try to replicate them,
They fall so desperately dead.

Words, words, words.
They have begun to form a mutiny.

They promise to deliver
Me a voice to portray the divine,

Instead they thieve my privacy,
Until I am not sure what is mine.

So from now on words are my weapon,
Whilst I am trapped in another time.
I will impale heads upon similes,
And I will cut you with a rhyme.

Roadways have flayed greyed arteries
Into the greenaries of the land.
A kingdom of metallic cities,
An empire built upon shifting sands.

And bombs stain the badlands
In dusty countries far ashore.
It is a time for distractive actions
And a constant state of war.

But what a dull reality!
To focus on the undulations,
The consequences of being free,
The purge of the weaker nations.

For life can be easy
If you live through glossy pages.
The life and lies of a celebrity;
The superficial ages.

A sorry state for families
Who talk only about the weather
And other temporal pleasantries,
On their proud suites made of leather.

Oh, what a poor affair!
Caring more for the clouds above,
Than the climates of our world-weary hearts,
and for all the ones we love.

And lo, we're careless and carefree
for all that does not appear on screen.
They'd gush over some royal baby,
But not pine over the unseen.

Our modern sicknesses
Are conjured and conceited too.
For what value is there in compassion,
If oneself is feeling blue?

Does charity begin at home?
You once said it does nothing at all.
But is home solely what you own,
In a world so close and so small?

These questions are silent,
But they are asked in the thousands.
By all those that are used to deaf ears,
Across all oceans and lands.

To the soft-hearted I call thee,
To not be so stilled and so dampened.
By the weight of the majority,
the crowds of the minds unopened.

And to myself I hope,
That we shall meet dear reader.
Above your recitation of my words,
To something more real,
To something much clearer.

This Poem Has Life.

Dear reader
And fellow lover of words,
I want this poem
(if you can call it that)
To be anomalous from
All the others
I have written in my despairs.

For, I want to write to you
Of soaring peace
And to give you a piece
Of indolent hope

In your day which I’m sure
Has been filled
With ugly news
(do not worry, it’s mostly lies)
and an absence of art.
I have for too long
Written only of my

Longings for reprieve
And for once,
This time, I wish to tell of
The joys of the world.

I breathe romance.
I consume it like
Poppies do fields,
(red is the colour of the arbiter).
It is in every action that
My little body is
Locked within.

It is the reason why we are here
My friend. It is the
Reason why
We are talking through

These pages.
Each day that the sun comes up
Is another promise of warmth
(the night is a shadow to cool within)
from a God that may
or may not
exist.

Let us not busy ourselves
With these big questions,
At least for a moment,
And let us simply

Live within the answers.
The evidence for love
Is found
(within the ground, not ourselves)
In the carousel movements
Of nature, and its promise
To return to us

As water does the sea.

My friend,
My old friend.
Think of me as a romantic,

Though please do not consider this
A weakness or a foolhardy and
Archaic enterprise.

It is but the pursuit of each flavour
Of emotion.
To taste

Both the sticky sweetness
Of infatuation,
And the hollowed defeat

Of an impossible love.
How the pains of a misguided plea
Can cleanse you

From all of the lies and
Cynicisms you have adorned yourself with.
The life of a romantic is nothing

But freedom.
It is the freedom to be, and to relish
In each dynamism of the heart

And to feel no shame in it’s decimation
Of your activities. A romantic
Is free to sulk

And to indulge oneself
In the theatre of their heart,
To forsake all that

Does not transcend them,
And all that does not lead them
On their pilgrimage

For that consummate love.
And, my friend,
My old friend,

It is the belief in love that creates me.
It animates my limbs
Into action each morning

And motivates my heart
To keep up its business
As shadows lengthen across the ground,

In the simplistic hope that one day,
Love will appear in a wicker basket
At my doorstep.

For now, I shall remain
Studious. Though that word should
Have no real place

In a romantic’s life.
I shall read of the love that escapes
Every author,

That causes them to spill words onto a page,
Hoping that they too
Surpass all of reality

And hold true the feeling of the numinous
That causes men to weep
At their guitars

And women into their pillow.

The sun is soft this year.

It sits so still above the carpet of the clouds,
Bashful and modest
For its own resplendence.

How I understand Icarus,
And his moth-like lust for
Its motherly warmth.

How I wish to slip beneath its surface
And to find myself bathed in
Life and light.

How I would forgo the steel of the sea
And the cold blue of the sky
To return to the star that birthed me

And all of my love for words.

The world is fast and reckless
Like a stampede of beasts and
Teenage ***.

We traded smog
For the roar of the city and
I am then reminded of my mobile life
Before atrophy set like plaster
In my bones.

Similarly, I lived above a bar,
And the roar of the crowds
Was compensated for
By the free drinks I would receive
To placate me,
To deafen me.

I remember heading out to the office
Already half-cut
Even before the banks had opened.

I remember everybody walking,
Not because the roads were too crammed,
But because it was so.

It was so, it was so,
And now that excuse is just not good enough
Anymore.

Neither am I.

I still walk the streets
And stop by outside windows.
It takes me a little longer these days
To read the signs and labels,
The mating rituals of the merchants;
Buy me, buy me, buy me!

They remind me of the girls I see these days,
The ones who live in semi-agony,
Lactic acid in their muscles and
A lack of sugar in their blood.

The way they walk so consciously nonchalant,
Impostered hair dragging in the wind,
Just living for the double takes
As they pass the men in the streets.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
And intimacy seems to me to have become
Just another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart.
The years we lived in absences,
Sleeping between lies and compromises
And lying awake at night,
Our bodies spent as our cheeks sunk into our pillows.
Our eyes staring past the darkness of the room
And beyond to something, somewhere,
Far from where we found our lives had laid.

I remember her so well, my dear coffee bean.
How desperate the years were
When we were apart,
Living out our lives and
Exchanging platitudes for company
In our loveless marriages.

I remember how bitterly disappointed I was,
To be bounded to the forever decreasing circles
I had to move within each day.
And I remember, so exquisitely remember,
The day I broke from them.

And we met.
We met over letters,
Recited by our eyes and written by the hands
Of our desires. Oh, the saliva of the stamp
Bringing us to a closeness
That was unbounded by geography.

These days,
Nobody understands the thrill of the postbox
And the dependent trust
You had to invest into the postman.

Nobody.

The welcome mat is now nothing
But a place to wipe the **** from your shoes
And to kick the bills away
From your footfalls.

It was once a pigeon hole,
An inbox and a faceless meeting point
For all of your dearest allies.

How I recall the excitement of the morning,
My sleep thinned to prepare for the slap of papers
And the return of my silent darling’s words.

Yes, today that has all gone
And so has she.

How I miss you, my dear
And the snort of your laughter.
How I miss counting out your imperfections;
Each another reason to love you
And to love you more.

Now that you are gone my darling,
My life is little more than an emptied school
In the endless weeks of summer.

I lie in wait, coffee bean,
For each time you appear, a phantasm
In my day. I wait for those special moments
Where I assume you will be sitting there,
Ageing with irrefutable brilliance
In the chair you so stubbornly frequented
Every day of our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
When I enter the room
And realise
That you are even less than a ghost,

A passing thought
That decays instantly in the air.

And the air darling,
The air is filled with noise in these streets.
Do you remember when you and I would stop
And listen to the busker by the bridge?

I do.

I think he is gone too now,
Though sometimes I still hear his music
As I pass above the river.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I last spoke to somebody
Who did not rush me through my sentences.
And so I’m learning the patterns of today
And instead bow my sad head
And just pay up for my goods.

I avoid home mostly.
It is okay once I am inside it,
But it is the returning that I am afraid of.

So I mostly walk the streets,
The same route each day,
Until darkness or hunger delivers me,
Confused at my door.

I stumble lethargically to the television set,
The one we bought together for our first apartment,
Do you remember?

I turn it on quickly to **** the breathless silence.

Now, whenever I do get to talk to somebody,
I feel my eyes blur to tears
For some inexplicable reason.
Oh! The ache in my guts

How often I must swallow panic
And all of those pills that do not work.
Instead they just fog my mind
And distort all of the anchors
And features in my life.

Even the television will shout at me.
Everything I watch is an advert,
And the news is getting uglier with each day.
Sometimes I will turn on the radio,
But music isn’t music anymore.

And so I’ve learnt to read above
The din of gameshows and the gunshots
From dramas full of anger and devoid
Of love.

I’ve learnt to read again,
As we did together in the warmth
Of the crackles that interceded
The crooners that used to play through the grooves
That my life is once again set between.

At times I feel I am the only reader left in the world.
That all authors write for myself,
Vying for my attentions.

Nobody reads anymore.

Though the depravity between us
Made our love all the more sublime,
I must admit I regret those absent, wasted years.

How wonderful it would be now,
To see your features mixed with mine
And hidden behind the faces of our children.

I would give all that I am,
Which admittedly is not much anymore,
To be able to see the pigments in your eyes
Again, in whichever form they took.

How I would kiss our daughter’s hands
If they resembled your’s.

How I would weep into the shoulders of our son,
If he resembled your heart.

And so now my darling,
I wander these thoughtless paths like a machine.
And though I look out at the opulence
Of the city streets, I am instead
Just walking through a memory,
Or some old doctored flicker show,
Where I cut out all of the ugliness
And leave just us.

The club fills with fumes;
Energy drinks and elixirs
To banish thought
And the subversion of your ****.

You keep it in check.
Fear only comes from women
When you care for the means
As well as the ends.

And so,
Objectified and vilified,
You chase your ******.
You pursue them in numbers,
You hunt in packs.

You wolf whistle and grab,
You expect them to pay back.

For each drink you bought
To soften their tongues
And then another,
Another,
Another to soften their will.

Oh, and you pass. You’ll pass
Stories around.
You’ll compete for the
Anecdotes over hangovers,
Your conquests of the night.

Each woman a tally,
A tick on a board,
Each kiss an insurance
That you’re self-assured.

But each morning you wake,
And there’s that something
That’s missing.

It’s no wonder when you
Look in the mirror,
You see just flesh,
An empty holding cell,
Of a manly veneer.